On a Challenging Day, Romney Seeks to Shift to His Policy Specifics

Mitt Romney gave a speech on Monday at the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce convention in Los Angeles.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

An effort by Mitt Romney to give his campaign new direction — built around new ads intended to highlight how a Romney presidency would take the nation on a better course than President Obama — was quickly overshadowed on Monday by the video of Mr. Romney’s unscripted remarks at a fund-raiser several months ago.

The attention paid to the video — in which he described nearly half of Americans as having a victim mentality and a dependency on government — further complicated Mr. Romney’s efforts to bring a sharper focus to his campaign and address tensions within his staff.

And a day that began with hope by his campaign that it would be back on the offensive after a couple of weeks largely spent on defense ended with a late-night news briefing where he said his comments, which were surreptitiously recorded before being obtained and presented by the Web site of Mother Jones, were inelegantly stated.

Earlier, Mr. Romney’s aides unveiled an advertising drive intended to address a sense among undecided voters that they do not have a clear idea of where he would take the country if elected. With just seven weeks until Election Day, it was an abrupt shift from a strategy that until now had been focused almost entirely on criticizing Mr. Obama and, in particular, the president’s handling of the economy.

Speaking directly into the camera in one of his commercials, Mr. Romney says, “My plan is to help the middle class,” and then goes on to list in broad strokes his plan to “cut the deficit,” “crack down” on China and “champion small business.”

Many conservative leaders have been pressing Mr. Romney to be more specific about his policies, saying the campaign needs to provide a sharper contrast to Mr. Obama and set out a governing agenda. If the ad did not fill in all of the blanks in Mr. Romney’s proposals, it did address what was becoming a crescendo of calls from supporters, donors and even some on Mr. Romney’s own staff for what has become a new mantra, “More Mitt.”

Aides said that recent polling done by the campaign suggested that voters were increasingly tuning in to the campaign now and were eager to hear more from Mr. Romney about his plans. In a conference call with reporters, Ed Gillespie, a senior strategist, said, “We are not rolling out new policy so much as we are making sure people understand that when we say we can do these things, here’s how we are going to get them done and these are the specifics.”

The new ad campaign, which also includes a spot criticizing Mr. Obama’s economic record for average families, was intended to help put the Romney campaign back on a forward footing after a rocky two weeks following the Republican convention. But the video threatened to upend that effort.

The Romney team was hit with the disclosure of the video just hours after introducing the ads. The video showed Mr. Romney speaking candidly with donors at a fund-raising event, saying that 47 percent of voters, Mr. Obama’s supporters, consider themselves “victims,” pay no income taxes and are therefore unresponsive to his low-tax message.

The video also showed him talking about how his best shot at winning over people who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and are now undecided is not with partisan rhetoric but with language that empathizes with their disappointment in the president’s performance.

The campaign was still seeking to get beyond a public airing of internal differences that appeared Sunday in Politico, in which several campaign advisers, speaking mostly on the condition of anonymity, complained about the domineering style of Mr. Romney’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens.

In an interview with Telemundo, Mr. Romney dismissed the discussion of frustration within his campaign. “I’ve got a terrific campaign,” he said. “My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well with them. Our campaign is doing well.”

The Romney campaign dismissed the idea that complaints about Mr. Stevens’s management style — and exceptionally broad portfolio — had led to an increased role for Mr. Gillespie, a former Republican Party chairman and counselor to President George W. Bush, who moved to the campaign full time several weeks ago. One aide, who would discuss campaign personnel issues only on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Gillespie was there not “instead of” Mr. Stevens but “in addition to” him, allowing him to focus more time on his most pressing responsibilities.

In interviews, several people involved in the campaign said that Mr. Gillespie was bringing a new sense of order and organization to the campaign, which was serving as an antidote to the more free-flowing style of Mr. Stevens, a longtime political advertising strategist with a creative bent, a proclivity to philosophize and no aversion to late-night phone calls or strategy sessions. (His response when aides pointed out that some of the team might be sleeping: Wake them up.)

Implicit in these descriptions of Mr. Gillespie was the notion that the campaign had been lacking the organizational approach he was bringing, though others said growing pains are natural as a campaign moves from the primaries into a general election battle, when staff grows exponentially.

The criticism against the campaign had been steadily escalating since the Republican convention, and quiet griping about Mr. Stevens was spilling outside the walls of the headquarters. Republicans said they were watching closely to see what Mr. Romney would do in the wake of the complaints that were first exposed in the Politico article.

Some Republicans close to the campaign said they hoped the concerns had reached Mr. Romney, who has come to trust Mr. Stevens’s counsel even when it has conflicted with that of other friends and family.

For instance, when Mr. Romney’s family and longtime friends urged him to focus more on his personal life — including his Mormon faith — rather than his career, Mr. Romney’s response was clear and unwavering: “I trust Stuart,” he said, implying that they should, too.

Mr. Stevens was adamant that the campaign focus intently on the economy and his business experience. That seemed to rankle some donors.

Just a few days ago, attendees at a major fund-raiser in New York City watched a biographical video about Mr. Romney that was first played at the Republican convention, but not during prime-time network coverage.

The campaign is hoping that the latest ad with Mr. Romney discussing his vision for governing will begin allaying some of those complaints — and, more important, quench undecided voters’ thirst for more information about him.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2012, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: On a Challenging Day, Romney Seeks to Shift to His Policy Specifics. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe